This Ain’t No Mouse Music – On DVD

The acclaimed documentary This Ain’t No Mouse Music!, the story of Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records, screened in theatres to rave reviews.

Chris Strachwitz is a detective of sounds, an archaeologist of the deep American music, music with roots that strike straight into the country’s heartland. He is the guiding force behind the legendary Arhoolie Records, producing albums that the Rolling Stones and many others played the grooves right off. Since 1960, Strachwitz has been recording the authentic pulses of the great American music, throbbing away in the backwoods of the nation. With tape-recorder in hand, Strachwitz traveled to plantations and prisons, roadhouses and whorehouses, churches and bayou juke joints. He returned with recordings that would revolutionize the sound of popular music.

For his mammoth pioneering contribution to the preservation of American music culture, Strachwitz was honored at The Americana Honors and Awards in Nashville in 2013. By sheer coincidence, I had seen the movie on the flight from Australia to the U.S. for that event (Qantas Airlines obviously has pretty good music tastes) and it was a terrific insight. Believe it or not, a day or two later, Strachwitz and a companion asked me for directions in Nashville. When I mentioned that his movie was on board an Australian airline flight, Chris was extremely bemused given the effort required to get the movie enough deserved attention in his homeland.
The feature-length documentary is now available for the first time on DVD, along with thirty two minutes of deleted scenes, or you can get the soundtrack CD (which contains a thirty two page book and thirty eight tracks of soulful, raucous music by Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Clifton Chenier, Flaco Jimenez and many others), or both as a package.Watch the trailer or buy here.